 | | Brooklyn-based author Frances Cha in Marlton, N.J.Kirsten Luce for The New York Times |
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“I’m beyond the stage where I get offended.” |
— Frances Cha, author of “If I Had Your Face” |
Frances Cha was a precocious child. |
She was 8 years old when she began writing novels while living in a province outside of Seoul in South Korea. |
But the protagonists, she said, were usually white with blonde hair and blue eyes — a far cry from the little girl she saw in the mirror. |
It took Ms. Cha over 25 years to flip the script and write a novel about four young women growing up in modern-day Seoul. The result is “If I Had Your Face,” an unflinching look at how a quartet of friends, who all live in the same apartment building, and do not come from wealth or status, pursue their dreams and ambitions in the fiercely competitive South Korean capital. |
In the novel, Ms. Cha confronts South Korea’s social norms, including its impossibly high beauty standards, its rigid social hierarchies, and its old-boy culture where business deals are done in “room salons,” the private establishments where attractive women serve men drinks. |
The power of “If I Had Your Face” is in its depiction of the unforgiving reality of Kyuri, Miho, Ara and Wanna’s lives — namely that self-acceptance often comes at great cost and beauty is the ultimate commodity. |
In Her Words spoke with Ms. Cha, who is based in Brooklyn, about the social and economic dynamics in contemporary South Korea. That included addressing the tensions between the American feminist objective of “being true to yourself” and the South Korean obsession with achieving the feminine ideal, all the way to surgically altering one’s appearance. |
Edited excerpts from the conversation follow. |
What inspired you to write a book about contemporary South Korea? |
I wanted to write about the people I encountered every day in Korea. I have read “The Joy Luck Club” so many times that both my covers have fallen off. And reading it, I realized it was possible to have an Asian protagonist and explore themes like filial piety. It wasn’t my intention to write a political novel. I wanted to write a story about young women that is very specific to modern Korea. I had a lot of training as a former culture editor at CNN International, where I was interviewing and functioning in Korean. I was writing stories and contextualizing them for an international audience. |
Since there are four main female characters, is it fair to say your book is a Korean “Sex and the City”? |
Unlike “Sex and the City,” which I loved, my narrators are not at all preoccupied with love. Their main preoccupations are survival and providing for their loved ones. Filial piety is what really drives two of the characters to transform their faces with elective plastic surgery. |
Explain the connection between filial piety and elective plastic surgery. |
Filial piety — “hyo” in Korean — is the age-old historical and traditional virtue of deep respect and support and love towards one’s parents and elders. To say “he is a hyo-ja” or “she is a hyo-nyeo” means someone is a good son or daughter, exhibiting and living by respect that is born of gratitude to your parents. I know many friends of my parents have lived with their in-laws for many decades, supporting and providing for them, despite the fact that these relationships are often strained. |
In Kyuri’s specific case, her driving motivation in life is to provide for her aging, ailing, widowed mother, and the way that she opts to do it is to get a better job in the room salon industry the only way she knows how: by undergoing more surgery to become more beautiful. But she is a hyo-nyeo — a very filial daughter — and her mother is the source of both her drive and her anguish. |
The cosmetic surgery industry is practically its own character in your book. Can you help us understand more about the obsession with plastic surgery in South Korea? |
When I tell people I’m Korean, people always ask if I’ve had plastic surgery. Plastic surgery runs very counter to American and Western ideas about remaining true to yourself — that you shouldn’t have to change anything about yourself because of anyone’s judgment. |
But in South Korea, there are very real and practical reasons people have plastic surgery. I ask readers to reserve their judgment on that. The reality in 21st century South Korea is how you look does matter, especially if you don’t come from wealth and status. Until recently, job applicants had to submit a photo with their job application. |
While people may think that plastic surgery and makeup are vain and frivolous, they are not considered a bad thing in South Korea. There’s even a saying that makeup is a courtesy to another person. Personally, I like to put in effort to my own appearance when meeting someone because it signifies you think the other person is worthy. |
The women in your book struggle so fiercely to survive, whereas the men, at the least the ones in your book, are more likely to be in positions of power and authority. It made me wonder: Is it better to be a man in South Korea? |
The percentage of female CEOs in Korea is one of the lowest in the world. If you consider careers, I think it is better to be a man. However, things change so fast in South Korea. Things are always shifting. It’s not clear that gender disparities will continue with the new generation. |
Due to the fact that nearly half of the country are dual income households — mostly in the younger generations — the delineations of gender roles within a household are becoming blurred and less significant, and that is shifting perspectives outside of the household as well. In the workplace, several extremely public #MeToo outings are impacting the patriarchy as well as a call for more female CEOs in a male-dominated sea of executives. |
Tell us more about room salons and why you decided to make them a central part of your character Kyuri’s plotline. |
To start, they’re nothing like a strip club. The women are fully clothed. Every group is in a private room, which is like a very luxurious karaoke bar. The women are there more to facilitate conversations. Their business objective is to get the men to drink. Like many things in South Korea, the room salons are tiered. The top 10 percent of establishments, including where Kyuri works, charge thousands of dollars a night. |
But the existence of room salons is very much a detriment to women in Korea because it’s where so many business deals are taking place, and women are not invited into this male space. In general, the women who work there are considered frivolous, a perception I think is unfair and very unfortunate. |
The dialogue among the friends is so blunt — they tell one another things about their appearance that only Larry David could get away with. What informed this kind of sharp prose? |
Yes, everything is so blunt and it really upsets people, especially the American mind-set. If two friends or relatives are close, they don’t think it’s offensive to tell each other that they’ve gained weight. It’s almost an affectionate greeting. The bluntness has jarred me on many occasions because someone will just open with, “You’ve gained weight. Here’s how you can lose it.” But the person may have the best of intentions. I’m beyond the stage where I get offended. Ali Wong, who is Asian-American, talks about the particularity of the Asian mentality. The bluntness is a different style of communication altogether. |
Is the title of your book, “If I Had Your Face,” about envy or something else? |
It’s more about how we would live someone else’s life differently if we were them. |
Here are three articles from The Times you may have missed. |
 | | Shailah Edmonds performs, center, at Don’t Tell Mama in Manhattan.Nathan Bajar for The New York Times |
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- “We Fascinated Them.” In 1970s Paris, all of the top designers wanted to hire dark-skinned women like Shailah Edmonds, above. Then fashion moved on. [Read the story.]
- “The Art of Her Deal.” Melania Trump used her husband’s victory in the November 2016 presidential election as an opportunity to solidify her financial standing and that of the couple’s son, Barron, according to a new book. [Read the story.]
- “We’ve started arguing in British accents.” After months of sheltering at home, 18 cohabitants talk about what so much togetherness has wrought. [Read their stories.]
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Today’s In Her Words is written by Hannah Seligson and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Sandra Stevenson. |
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